* Only the project summaries of direct relevance to ST and not published in the December 1993 issue"Software and advanced information processing-

Ref. EUR 15375EN/3"

January 1997

Software Technologies /1

Summaries of projects

January 1997

Software Technologies /2

Esprit Project 8123-

CITYCARD

An Electronic Information Service for EuropeanLocal Authorities

Keywords:

RTD project.

Technical-

natural language, knowledge-based systems, Internet.

Sector-

public administration.

The main objective of CityCard is to improve resident participation in LocalAuthority (LA) activities and initiatives by information dissemination, serviceprovision and communication enhancement between residents and LAs. Toexpedite public accessto information and services the CityCard system canoffer residents the possibility of obtaining information and/or services incomplex areas such as public health, planning, traffic management, localpolice, education, and child minding. Information provision type will depend onlocal demand.

To improve resident participation in LA activities the system offers twopossibilities:

residents and LA. The system will guarantee security, users' privacy and dataintegrity.

The major result of the project, the creation of an industrial prototype based ontwo different pilot applications (Wansbeck and Bologna), has already beenreached. The consortium's exploitation strategy aims to customise CityCard forany LA, by using the portable nature of CityCard's basic components.

The main goal of HUMANOID 2 is the creation of tools for "The digitalCommedia dell'arteAge". The target market of its predecessor HUMANOID(Project 6709) is simulation, where representation of virtual humans is anessential

factor. HUMANOID 2 promotes autonomous realistic virtual humans,particularly for the multimedia industry, where interactive use of thefunctionality would be an immediate asset.

Each film and TV producer is interested in developing new features andprogrammes where the public is involved interactively. The authors, editorsand publishers of CD-I's and CD-ROM's who exploit the demand for increasinginteraction need such a system. Furthermore many users of the softwareHUMANOID would also like to add tools.

The HUMANOID 2 project provides designers with the capability of embeddingsimulated humans in games, multimedia titles and film animation. HUMANOID2 makes the technology developed by the HUMANOID project available to theentertainment industry, including the following functions: human modelling,motion control of the human body, deformations of the body while in motion,interaction of the virtual human with the 3D scene, object grasping, walking,neural network systems for behavioural motion control, facial animation.

HUMANOID 2 extends the capabilities of humanoids developed by the HUMANOIDproject in two ways to make them appear more realistic:

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HUMANOID 2 also provides means for the designer to construct scenariosbased on these autonomous humanoids. The project also develops andevaluates an effective user interface by conducting user trials. Particularattention is paid to the believability of the humanoids and the fluency ofinteraction with the user.

The aim of the Multi Aircraft Training Environment (MATE) project is to useadvanced software and man-machine interface technology to exploit the hiatusin the market for pilot training equipment.

Current pilot training is based on (a) expensive high fidelity flight simulators,and (b) low-cost low-fidelity CBT (Computer Based Training) systems. Thehigh cost of (a) and the limited training value of (b) means that ownership oftraining equipment is not cost-effective for the smaller operators.

The objective of the MATE project is to demonstrate a new pilot trainingsystem with the following characteristics:

training, supplementing the more expensive simulators currently used for thispurpose.

Contact Point

Mr. Ole Lindemann Bogh

AVITRACO A/S

tel + 45 42 31 03 99

16 Faergevej

fax + 45 42 31 07 00

DK-3600 Frederikssund

Participants

Country

Role

AVITRACO

DK

C

TTSL

UK

P

RISOE

DK

P

DASA

D

P

ECRC

D

A

DATACEP

F

A

DRA

UK

A

DIVISION

UK

A

Start Date

Duration

1 October 1994

36 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /8

Esprit Project 9075-

MASK

Multimedia Multimodal Automated Service Kiosk

Keywords:

RTD project.

Technical-

speech recognition, multimedia, man machine interface.

Sector-

railways, tourism and travel.

The rigidity of user interfaces (touch-screen or menu-driven) of automaticsystems prevents users from transacting tasks as fluently as would be thecase were they communicating with other people. The objective of the MASKproject is to develop an automated kiosk demonstrator with a more friendlyuser-interface, and to pave the way for a more advanced public serviceapplication bythe use of multimodal and multimedia input-output. The MASKkiosk should be used in a real public service context (rail traveller services).

To improve the effectiveness of the user dialogue, and to simulate as close aspossible human-human dialogue, the project has analysed the technologicalrequirements in the context of users and the tasks they perform in executingtheir enquiries (e.g. train timetable). This user-centred study was based on theWizard of Oz technique which is a simulation-based study. The project willenhance existing automated kiosks by enabling interaction through the co-ordinated use of multimodal inputs (speech recognition combined with touchscreen), multimedia outputs (voice synthesis, graphics, etc.). The MASK kioskwill be able to

"understand" in natural language, taking into account userhesitations, and will also be able to recognise different speakers (speakerindependent).

The design of the enhanced kiosk will be implemented and evaluated in thecontext of representative tasksand users, and improvements in effectivenessare expected over current systems.

The results of the work will be exploited within the project by the industrialpartner MORS. It is expected that the break through made in the context ofthe demonstrator should be exploited by other systems in other applications,thus increasing the general competitiveness of Europe in the world-widemarket for public service systems.

January 1997

Software Technologies /9

Contact Point

Mr. Sour Chhor

MORS

tel + 33 1 49 39 32 32

Centre d'Affaires Paris-Nord

fax

+ 33 1 48 65 33 58

Tour Continental-

BP200

E-mail:m_capn@dialup.francenet.fr

F-93153 Le Blanc-Mesnil Cedex

Participants

Country

Role

MORS

F

C

SNCF

F

P

LIMSI

F

P

UCL

UK

P

SIGNES PARTICULIERS

F

A

Start Date

Duration

1 April 1994

30 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /10

Esprit Project 9801-

WEBCORE

A World-Wide Web Coordinating Organisation

Keywords:accompanying measure.

Technical-

World-Wide Web, W3 Consortium,

Internet, interoperability, security,electronic commerce.

Sector-

IT industry.

The project is conducted both by INRIA and MIT, together with CERN.

TheEuropean Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) invented the World WideWeb in 1989. The needs of particle physics have forced CERN to be a pioneerin networking technology for many years; it is still a major networking site.INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computing andAutomation is the European centre of the World-Wide Web. The Americancentre is at the Laboratory for Computer Science at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT/LCS).

The WebCore project is a pilot project

with the overall goal of creating aEuropean information market where information, goods and services can bepurchased, sold or exchanged freely to improve economic well being andquality of life for people in Europe and throughout the world. The approach isbased on the World-Wide Web (WWW), an enabling technology that allowsusers to access information from different sources in a uniform way vianetworks. It already offers access to a wide range of information sources viaintuitive interactive interfaces. New sources can easily be added.

The specific objectives are to establish the European Chapter of theinternational World-Wide-Web Consortium (W3C), and to arrive atspecifications and recommendations which to guide further evolution. Theresults envisaged within the action time scale include improving WWWstandards in response to both evolving user requirements and advancingtechnology. In some areas progress on standards can be achieved within thetime scale: in others recommendations will be made on standards policy,including what needs to be standardised and what standards need to beincorporated.

The World-Wide-Web Consortium promotes the Web by producingspecifications and reference software. W3C is funded by industrial membersbut its products are

freely available to all. The consortium is run by MIT LCS, inthe US, and INRIA, in Europe, in collaboration with CERN.

The aims of the consortium are to support advancement of InformationTechnology in the fields of networking, graphics and user interfaces bydeveloping the World-Wide-Web into a comprehensive informationinfrastructure and to encourage industry to adopt a common set ofinteroperable protocols. The role of MIT and INRIA is to provide a vendorneutral architectural, engineering and administrative structure necessary to:

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January 1997

Software Technologies /11

A variety of topics are addressed by the consortium. Areas investigatedinclude:

standardisation initiative grew from awareness thatknowledge technology has an increasingly important role to play in systemsdevelopment, and that full exploitation has not been made of establishedknowledge formalisms.

An underlying issue is that without the ability toreuse

knowledge from onesystem to another, the cost of development will continue to be excessive. Inaddition, without the ability tocommunicate

knowledge, computer systems willremaindata

processors. It is the consortium's view that the way to removethese obstacles is to develop standards facilitating knowledge reuse andexchange:

is establishingrecommendations for knowledge level standards; currently, at this level, thereis evident deficiency. Itis here that Europe has greatest experience andrenown. Americans are addressing the "lower" levels of knowledgerepresentation (file-interchange and implementation/source levels): thesecomputationally oriented expressions of knowledge are forcibly the "lowestcommon denominator" and are simply inadequate for implementationindependent representation of knowledge interchange with non-computerprofessionals.

works by way of issuing Requests-for-Commentary onconsortium proposals, and Requests-for-Action for original contributions, to theknowledge engineering community. The project maintains a Web page,participates in relevant conferences and workshops, and issues bulletins("EurOKNOWLEDGE

News").

Contact Point

Mrs. Mari Georges

ILOG

tel + 33 1 49 08 35 57

9 rue de Verdun

fax + 33 1 49 08 35 10

F-94253 Gentilly Cedex

E-mail:georges@ilog.fr

http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~euroknow/

Participants

Country

Role

ILOG

F

C

UNIV .EDINBURGH

UK

P

DTK

D

P

CAP GEMINI INNOVATION

F

P

CISE

I

P

UNIV. COVENTRY

UK

P

SWISS BANK

CH

P

DEC

F

P

Start Date

Duration

1 February 1995

15 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /14

Esprit Project 9807-

BOISI

Bridging Open Systems

to the Infrastructure

Keywords:accompanying measure.

Technical-

open systems, distributed systems.

Sector-

telecommunications, petrochemical, health care.

The area of Open Systems has been developing standards and referencemodels. Architectural and application specific frameworks have been definedwith some influence from the requirements of the user. These frameworks willbe extended to the Information Infrastructure. The two major poles in theInformation Society are, on the one hand users and, on the other, providers.BOISI is an accompanying measure that endeavours to bridge and to reconcilethese poles by establishing a general reference model for User Requirementsfor Open Systems as an input to the implementation of the InformationInfrastructure. Several Applications areas have been selected in order

to bringtogether the general model which will be further validated against theexperience and technology awareness of X/Open prior to undertakingmeasures for the building of consensus. Workshops are planned to influencethe players in the Information Society. A final report will document the resultsand indicate areas of further action. BOISI is undertaken by the key EuropeanOpen Systems groupings.

BOISI considers how to approach bridging Open Systems to the InformationInfrastructure, using experienceavailable from individual groups who canrepresent user reference models from vertical industry sectors and from thehorizontal viewpoint. Some of these groups (Partners/Core Group) are alreadyfamiliar with the concept of Open Systems Infrastructures within their ownsector, and have participated in initiatives in this area supported by theEuropean Commission in ESPRIT and other programmes, particularly theOpen Systems Working Group set up by DGIII. The work of this group has,within a short time, established a clear initial consensus about UserRequirements in outline structural terms. The implications of this havesignificant potential benefit in terms of horizontal synergy, market stimulus andvalue creation.

BOISI seeks to establish the reality of this potential; to assess how the linkscan be realised within a general reference model, the implications for theimplementation strategy of the Fourth Framework Programme, to secureinput/validation from other related groups and vertical sectors and to provideconclusions and recommendations for the future. It builds on existing work thathas been undertaken within current Framework Programmes to establish thereality of a common approach to the linking of information systems and theinfrastructure needed to

support them. The aim is that quantifiable synergybenefits can be obtained from focusing on horizontal excellence supporting theinteroperability of high value, low overhead application components.

BOISI falls into two main phases: first, establishment of a basic paradigm viathe Core Group along with the production and agreement of a scoping studyand interim report. Second, the exposure of the basic paradigm to inputs andcomments from other groups resulting in a publishable document and a set of

January 1997

Software Technologies /15

policy

and actions recommendations. These will become the base fordisseminating and communicating the results and conclusions across the widespectrum of the two poles; users and providers.

During the period to February 95, the Core Group secured consultativefeedback from the vertical and horizontal sectors with which they have directcontact as input to an Interim Report. During the period from September 95 toFebruary 96 a number of workshops were organised to cover the involvementand input from other groups

based on the Interim Report, in terms of exposureto a wider audience (EC, politicians, industry, vertical sector agencies,Eurogroups) at both the macro-environment level and in a more general publicsituation. This will result in a final study report, a

set of recommendations and aformal presentation of the results.

Contact Point

Mr. David Lloyd-Williams

Groupe RICHE

tel + 44 1734 321215

Penerley Lodge, Wokingham Road

fax + 44 1734 344329

Hurst, Berks

UK-Reading RG10 0SB

Participants

Country

Role

STICHTING GROUP RICHE

NL

C

X/OPEN

UK

P

ETIS

B

P

POSC

UK

P

Start Date

Duration

1 December 1994

10 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /16

Esprit Project 9808-

CASTING

Case-Based Reasoning: Stimulation of IndustrialUsage

Keywords:accompanying measure.

Technical-

case-based reasoning.

Sector-

finance and banking, aerospace, telecommunications, health care.

Experience is at the heart of any decision, in business as well as in our privatelives. It is based on what we have seen or dealt with in the past and thedecisions made then with their known outcome that are guide currentdecisions. While our personal experience is only based on what we have in ourmemory, in industrial and business operations such "history" is stored in vastdata-bases. But do operators when diagnosing a system, or bank managerswhen deciding to give a loan make use of that stored information? Or will theyrely on their own memory because accessing and analysing those data-basesis too much time consuming? Most of the time they ignore the hidden butvaluable information that has been collected.

To support human decisions in terms of time and quality, specific tools andtechniques are necessary to structure old and new "decision cases" andautomatically relate new situations to previous cases.

Such a technique, known as Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), has beendeveloped over the past decade and has now reached a stable level. Itsupports reuse of existing information without tedious and time consumingcollection and structuring of new information. It thus ensures shortdevelopment and take-up time in a business organisation. Software tools arecoming on the market and numerous companies have explored these toolsand built successful applications amongst others, such as:

The CASTING supportive operations are undertaken in France, UK and Italy.Leading experts in the field of CBR and experienced users provide valuableinformation to decision makers, helpingthem to form a clear picture of thepotential benefit to their own applications. These include the domains ofmarketing, commercial bases, logistics, order treatment and customerservices, production and quality management control, and administrativeservices as well as data management.

Such an approach will help companies and institutions to increase the qualityof their services and products and to optimise the relevant time management.

CASTING has validated the relevant information for an easy access toCBRincluding:

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Contact Point

Ms. Rita Busert

Marketing & Technologies Avancées

tel + 33 1 45610502

36 avenue Hoche

fax + 33 1 45632258

F-75008 Paris

E-mail: brains@mta.fr

Participants

Country

Role

MTA

F

C

ALGOTECH SISTEMI

I

P

MARI COMPUTER SYSTEMS

UK

P

Start Date

Duration

1 January 1995

18 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /18

Esprit Project 9809-

SER

Software Evolution and Reuse Deployment Plan

Keywords:accompanying measure.

Technical-

reuse, evolution.

Sector-

telecommunications, finance and banking, IT industry, aerospace.

The objective of this action is to further promote and deploy the SoftwareEvolution and Reuse (SER) solutions produced by previous Esprit projectsREBOOT, PROTEUS, RECYCLE, EUROBANQUET, EUROWARE, SCALEand COSMOS in European software producing organisations.

Promotion will particularly focus on the management of the softwareorganisations who, because of their maturity and dimension, are potentialusers of the proposed technology.

A user group includes all participants involved in deployment and supportsinformation exchange, based on experiences with the proposed solutions,refine user requirements, and further disseminate SER solutions.

The ultimate goal is to have secured at least 20 organisations applying one ofthe proposed solutions upon project completion.

In order to achieve the above objective, a bi-directional flow of information hasbeen established both to and from actual and potential users. Moreover,because promotion and deployment complement each other they will bestrongly linked throughout the project to ensure maximal efficiency.

Assessing the suitability of existing Information Technology and identifyingdevelopment needs.

The project tackles the framing of CE methodology and relatedneeded/available enabling Information Technology into a coherent picture. Thisis to be compared with the industrial expectations and requirements derivedfrom organisational, cultural and human product development characteristics.This is performed to enable production of an assessed set of guidelines for CEimplementation in European industry that apply to complex electronic products,at both multi-company and company-wide levels.

Tasks concentrate on identifying general methodological issues in ConcurrentEngineering. These will be discussed and analysed during a dedicatedworkshop. Attention will be centred on the European industrial environment. Itis anticipated that the final

users of CE methodology, will identify the featuresand constraints that must be satisfied if effectiveness and economies are to bemet by the CE implementation strategy.

The project will cover development of prerequisites for CE implementation,evaluation of suitability of existing information technology, identification of ITareas requiring further developments, and definition of methods to be used forcapture and characterisation of product development processes.

Validation of identified CE methodologyis achieved through the specification oftwo pilot implementation programmes driven by the final user.

Exploitation plans of project results include, at industrial partner level, thefuture implementation of pilot programmes specified during the project, and atmethodological level it is expected that results will constitute a reference forthe identification of development activities in IT for CE, and for thedevelopment of integrated support services to industry for the adoption of CEstrategy.

The broad objective of the SIENA project is to increase take-up of ArtificialNeural Networks (ANNs) by European business. It is recognised that althoughEurope research is strong in this area, industrial uptake lags behind the USAand Japan. The project emphasis is therefore on theapplication

of thetechnology rather than its development. It will particularly help suppliers whoare small innovative SMEs technology suppliers or users.

The major objectives of SIENA are as follows:

1.

To assess the current state of the market for ANNs, including both thesupply side (tool vendors, system builders etc.) and the demand side (end-user companies). The assessment includes an analysis by country (orregion) and by industry sector, since the picture is unlikely to behomogeneous across all of these.

2.

To increase awareness of the potential benefits which the use of ANNs canbring to business in Europe, in terms aimed at managers and seniortechnologists in companies. This includes pointers to the ways in whichfirms can secure advantages from the technology; this would includereduction in manufacturing costs, increase in product quality, faster time tomarket, and so on.

3.

To encourage suppliers of ANN technology in Europe by raising the marketconsciousness and creating a "demand pull". Firmscontributing to theproject will obtain access to results which can be used for their own futureplanning.

4.

To develop material which can be used in achieving immediate projectobjectives and which may also provide a focus for future initiatives. Inparticular, case studies drawn from existing practice and experience.

5.

To prepare the ground for future European initiatives in this area. Theexperiences from this project will be valuable for input to planning futureprogrammes in the same area. The project may also lay the foundations fora network of application specialists across Europe to complement thelargely academic links which exist at present.

Dissemination of findings from the project, including presentation at one ormore major conferences and electronic dissemination via the World WideWeb.

Contact Point

Mr. Tony Morgan

Augusta Technology Ltd

tel + 44 1970 62 60 01

The Science Park 2

fax + 44 1970 62 66 65

Dyfed

E-mail: azm@augusta.co.uk

UK-Aberystwyth SY23 3AH

Participants

Country

Role

AUGUSTA TECHNOLOGY

UK

C

NCAF

UK

A

ZENTRUM FUR NEUROINFORMATIK

D

A

NEUROPTICS

F

A

IIC

E

P

STICHTING NEURALE NETWERKEN

NL

P

Start Date

Duration

1 January 1995

18 months

January 1997

Software Technologies /24

Esprit Project 20280-

WIDE

Workflow on Intelligent Distributed databaseEnvironment

Keywords:RTD project.

Technical-

workflow, DBMS, active rules, complex transaction models, CORBA.

Sector-

health care, finance and banking, public administration.

The main objective of the WIDE project is to extend the technology ofdistributed and active databases, in order to provide added value to advanced,application-oriented software products implementing workflow techniques.

WIDE is inspired by a coherent, component-oriented vision. Modern softwaresystems should be built by composing, enhancing, and integrating software.Thus, flexible and extensible active rules and enhanced transactional modelswill be developed on top of existing database kernels, with a kernel-independent approach that warrants maximum portability and inter-operability.In particular, compliance towards the CORBA standard will be enforced.

The technology developed in WIDE will be directly exploited for theenhancement of FORO, an existing workflow management system supportingthe management of enterprise-wide processes and their constraints in a co-operative, distributed environment, developed by Sema Group sae.

From a technical standpoint, WIDE will provide innovative, tightly integratedfeatures concerned with advanced transactions (supporting distributed andasynchronous processing in the context of long-running and co-operativeactivities) and with reactive processing (supporting a rich event language aswell as enhanced, flexible coupling to transactions).

These features will be used to improve the services offered by FORO, inparticular for what concerns distribution and flexibility, two strategicallyessential features for the next generation of workflow management systems.Access to a variety of heterogeneous sources (with some support formultimedia features) and inter-operability will also be considered within thescope of WIDE.

佮⁴he⁯瑨e爠hand⁏T,⁰牥r楯i獬s⁡⁮楣桥⁴echno汯ly⁦o爠departmentaltechnical application domains, has begun to enter the mainstream commercialmarket. Indicators for this are: major investments of large software vendors,spreading out of

OT into most end user areas and rapid development ofstandardisation bodies (OMG, ODMG). However, Object-Oriented DBMS mustsatisfy the requirements of large scale commercial applications in terms ofperformance and availability.

Leading European RDBMS and ODBMS vendors are now working together onthis subject. This presents a unique opportunity The approach is to furtherdevelop each of the DBMSs, that represents proven technology in its area,with the complementary technology of the partner. Approachingthe final goalof a mission critical OODBMS in those different ways will support rapidprogress in the subject.

Technical implementation is structured into two phases. In the first phasepieces of technology available from Software AG and O2 Technology will beintegrated. In the second the project will concentrate on developing and